


A Soul Apart

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [128]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Codependency, Death, Gen, Parent-Child Discussions, Resurrection, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-07 00:44:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11612403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Wanda sits beside him, and does not move. It might be minutes, it might be hours. Now she is no longer keeping her brother’s speed in check time becomes as much a loss to her as it ever has been to him. Rogue sits on his other side, her gloved hand tight on Pietro’s cold one.Pietro, the only one who refused to fear them, the girls with too much power. Wanda and Jean, Rogue and Ororo, girls who the world feared for being women as much as being mutants, and he, the lone one unafraid, the lone one without means or intent to try to control them. Charles could manipulate as readily as Erik, could trick into a mind sooner still, and Pietro, there, ever unafraid, had never even considered it.





	A Soul Apart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucdarling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucdarling/gifts).



> This is a sequel to [The Mercury Protocols](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11612361) which is in turn a sequel to [An Agony of Seconds](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9152881), done for Lucdarling for one particular little conversation in this fic. Well... maybe two. 
> 
> This was written while listening to [Plastic Heart by Nostalghia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LaiBsm4DVI), and I recommend listening to it because it's a great song. I also recommend reading the other two fics in this storyline because otherwise this will make no sense whatsoever.

**** As the bullets sang towards Pietro something in Wanda screamed, screamed beyond her mind’s cry of  _ Not my  _ **_brother!_ ** , screamed in a wail like a banshee, some mournful screeching thing that demanded to be heard. Wanda’s scarlet - mental, physical, that she did not yet understand - reached out towards her brother and  **held.**

 

* * *

 

His body, when she reaches it, is cold. 

 

* * *

 

She does not know what to do, with Pietro gone. He has always been there, all their lives, he has been there right at her side. When they were children, playing, when they were ten, holding the rubble off them, when they were ten, shimmering into blue, unafraid of her scarlet, carrying her free while she kept their path clear. When they moved to America, when they went to school - there has never been a time she could not reach out, stretch out a thought and find her brother.

 

* * *

 

There is a gaping hole in her side, the warmth of Pietro gone until only a chasm remains. She wants to lean against him, lean into his side and rest her head against his shoulder but if she does that she will topple because  _ he isn’t there anymore. _

He’s laid out on the bed in front of her, machines keeping his body just barely alive even as his mind is empty.

He is gone.

 

* * *

 

Wanda sits beside him, and does not move. It might be minutes, it might be hours. Now she is no longer keeping her brother’s speed in check time becomes as much a loss to her as it ever has been to him. Rogue sits on his other side, her gloved hand tight on Pietro’s cold one. 

Pietro, the only one who refused to fear them, the girls with too much power. Wanda and Jean, Rogue and Ororo, girls who the world feared for being women as much as being mutants, and he, the lone one unafraid, the lone one without means or intent to try to control them. Charles could manipulate as readily as Erik, could trick into a mind sooner still, and Pietro, there, ever unafraid, had never even considered it.

The streak of white in Rogue’s hair is almost invisible against the sheets.

“Wanda.”

She knows that voice.

Rogue looks up, skids, back, leaves in the shaking remains of Pietro’s blue, shimmering and shuddering around her edges. Wanda does not know how many hours worth of Pietro’s blue Rogue has left, and prays it is enough to help her until someone else is there who will lend her their power as easily as Pietro did.

She does not turn. She does not look at the man behind her.

“Oh, Wanda.”

Erik sinks into the chair beside her, reaches to touch Pietro in the bed and her scarlet snarls out of her shoulders without her so much as twitching, a single arcing movement as it had scythed out of her those scant years ago.

“I’m so sorry,” Erik says. “I- Charles told me. He… he thought I should know my-”

Scarlet chokes him without Wanda moving an inch.

“We were never yours before,” she says, voice hoarse and hollow and some terrible torn thing. “Even when you learned, you did not try to claim us or apologise. What gives you a claim now?”

Erik is quiet, eyes watchful under his helm.

“Charles thinks I can help you.”

Wanda’s laugh is a terrible hollow thing.

“I know you two are close,” he says. “I know some people say too close. I  _ don’t care. _ You’re mutants. You’re powerful. You’re  _ my children, _ and you survived things which would kill anyone else. You don’t answer to them. You don’t answer to anyone except yourselves.” He pauses, considers his words. “You do not even answer to me.”

Wanda’s scarlet twists and turns, a miasma of grief and loss made physical, warping around her and through her like some phantasmal ghost, her brother’s face hidden over and over in the curls of her scarlet.

“I will not ask you to,” he says. “Not even for this.” He pushes himself up from his elbows, looks forward. “I know someone who can heal even the dead, so long as their souls still linger. I think, with all your power, with all your love for your brother and his love for you, he will linger as long as he can.”

Before them, Pietro’s body is still and lifeless, but for the single slow breaths the machines give him.

Wanda’s eyes are filled with scarlet, intense and wary as she turns her gaze to Erik. “What is the price.”

Erik shakes his head. “No price. For this? A life? The life of one of my  _ children? _ No price. I will call in this favour I am owed, and I ask nothing from you in exchange. We take Pietro to the Brotherhood, to the one who owes me this favour, and your brother will be healed, and you may leave as soon as you wish to.”

There is some mad set to Wanda’s mouth, something fever-mad and furiously grieving in her eyes as she says, “Prove it.”

Erik’s helmet makes the softest of clinks against the metal chair.

 

* * *

 

“I have healed his body,” the healer says. Their arms are long and thin, their veins black against grey skin, hair a huge and curling cloud that fades into intangibility. Wanda has seen how his hands can phase as Kitty’s do, straight through the physical, as he put Pietro back together. “He’s healed up as much as I can manage. His own metabolism helped, otherwise you might not have time left before the bond between soul and body dissipates. You should return his soul home as soon as you are able.”

Wanda looks at the still and empty body of her brother where it lays on the table and nods.

“You must,” the healer says. Their hand is light on her shoulder, light as a breeze, light as Rogue’s hand would be because of Rogue’s fear, light as Jean’s would be for fear of startling, light as Pietro’s would be, because Pietro knows a touch can be as light as air and still be felt, still be enough. “You  _ must _ return his soul within the next hour, or two, or he is gone forever. You do not have much time, you must let go of your hold on his soul and push it back into him, to where it belongs. Otherwise he will die permanently, and Magneto’s favour will have been for nothing.”

_ I don’t care about Magneto _ , Wanda thinks. Regardless that he is the one who fathered them, regardless that he called in this favour for them, for his blood and their abilities, regardless that he has asked no price for this. Wanda doesn’t care. Wanda nods.

“Leave me alone?” she asks and the healer nods. 

“I will be right outside. Just find his soul and set it loose.”

The door closes with a click behind them, and Wanda lets out a long breath.

 

* * *

 

The soul waits within her mind, grasped so tightly by her scarlet that cutting through each skein would take far longer than she has.  _ But we must _ , she thinks.  _ We must. If we want Pietro back we must _ . Wanda stretches out scarlet fingers, finds the tangle of red and scarlet and crimson that wraps around the blue of her brother’s soul and tries to tug it loose.

Some threads have give, others do not. Others have tangles she cannot decipher, loop through non-euclidean space in ways that make her head hurt to look at.

_ Please _ , she thinks - to herself, to her scarlet, to her brother’s shining soul -  **_Please_ ** .

She does not know how much time she has, only that it is ticking down, that the faint, fine connection between Pietro’s soul and his body is fading still further, that when it is gone so too is her brother.

**_Please_ ** , she thinks, bold burgundy and brass instead of scarlet and gold.  **_Please, Pietro, for me_ ** .

The blue shivers, shakes, and shrugs off the scarlet.

 

* * *

 

Pietro heaves a breath again, as the last of the blue of his soul sinks within his chest, and something in Wanda falls loose, all tension lost as Pietro chokes out an awkward breath, and another, and starts breathing with ease again.

“Pietro,” is said, barely a breath from her lips, and forehead is pressed to forehead, nose to nose, their breaths mingling between their lips, their hands already knotting in each other’s hair.

Wanda can feel her brother’s warmth, see the bright glow of his mind, knows with a burning certainty that though she had felt his death he was alive now.

“Pietro,” she says again, her thumb stroking a line over his scalp.

“Wanda,” Pietro replies, calm voice laced with an undercurrent of worry. “Wanda, what happened?”

Wanda’s forehead shifts against his as she shakes her head. “It’s-” she starts and then opens her mind to his, all her memories of his death spreading outwards like wings.

Her brother’s arms wrap around her without question as she begins to shake.

 

* * *

 

“What happened?” Pietro asks again.

“You died,” Wanda says. “You died but… somehow I held onto your soul. There are people, people who can heal even the dead, and Magneto knew one, they owed him a favour. When he heard-”

“He offered.” Pietro does not need to hear it all to make a guess at what Magneto might do, to try to win Wanda over. His hands stroke through Wanda’s hair, over her shoulders. “What was the price?”

Wanda’s head shakes against his again. “No price. He asked no price at all.”

Doubt swims through Pietro’s mind in silver.  _ He lies _ , he thinks.  _ He tricks.  _

_ He spoke true _ , Wanda replies, scarlet looping around the boughs of the tree of his mind like ribbons, pulling them towards her, to listen to her scarlet.  _ No price. He asked no price at all. _

_ He wants our trust _ , Pietro thinks.  _ Our loyalty. He thinks he might win it with this. _

Wanda’s eyes close, slowly, brow tilting forwards against his in acknowledgement. _ Yes, _ she thinks, _ Yes, he hopes that we will be won to him, that one day we might fight at his side, but he knows we will not, not yet. This, he did because he wanted his son back. _

Startlement, startlement runs through Pietro like a shock of lightning, disbelief and silver slivers of doubt, all eating away at the scarlet offering Wanda had sent into his mind.  _ He is no father to us. _

Wanda’s reply is considering.  _ He has never acted as a father to us. I think that he is trying to now. _

_ I don’t trust him _ .

The laugh Wanda gives is startled and small, but its small happiness in the dearth born of grief is comfort to Pietro.  _ I don’t either _ , she sends, shifting her posture so her head is tucked under Pietro’s chin, curling into the comforting posture they have both preferred since they were small.  _ At least _ , she sends,  _ we are safe enough here. We can rest for a bit before we go back to Xavier’s. _

Pietro tucks his face to Wanda’s hair, breathes her in, and relaxes.

 

* * *

 

Wanda rarely wakes him for her nightmares any more. The last time Pietro can remember was after a nightmare when they were thirteen, and he’d been too exhausted to feel the dark fingers of her nightmare curling out of the crypts of her mind. Since then she has run to him when he has woken from nightmares, shaken him free of them, and he has helped her with the same. He has watched over her when her sleep has been troubled, woken her when he has wondered something that would have consequences for both of them, but Wanda waking him when she has need? She has been as stubborn about that as he has been about not asking help of her and burdening her further.

Thus it is a surprise to see Wanda standing at the door to his room in Magneto’s house (not terribly big or small, but a good base for his Brotherhood, and held securely under protections wrought by his people) clad in pyjamas and wrapped in a blanket and looking more worried than she has in a long while.

“I can’t sleep,” she whispers. “I can feel your mind but it’s too like holding your soul.”

Pietro opens his door wide without question.

 

* * *

 

When Wanda first sees how the love in Pietro’s mind shines blue and scarlet she is almost scared by it. Bright and bold and beautiful, rich in his colour and in hers and so so very different from the binding love of siblinghood that exists in her mind.

“Why did you never tell me?”

Pietro only shrugs, shrugs as though hiding this, all this love and want and desire, has been nothing at all. “I didn’t want to burden you. I thought it gone. It should not even  _ be. _ ”

_ Burden you _ . They have never burdened each other, intentionally or otherwise, and they both know this. They both know that, when it comes down to it, even if it was a burden there is nothing they would not do for each other. “So you burden yourself?”

Pietro smiles thinly. “It is no burden. I would rather keep this to myself than have it pressure you or worry you. This is… it should not be. So I treated it as though it was not.”

In Pietro’s mind it is  _ glowing,  _ bright and undeniable, in absolute refusal of his decision to hide it, in absolute denial of how it rotted down to bones. It rises from the well beneath his tree, illuminates the flowers of its boughs, the flower that blooms in the nest of branches that is the very core of his mind, it floats through the water that surrounds the roots and the base of the tree - her own bright scarlet alongside his own bright blue, both mingling into bright and beautiful purple and perfect peace.

“Do not worry for me,” Pietro says. “I chose this when I realised this. Even when I’ve tried to tell you, shown you that I am loyal and that I trust you and that I care, I tried make sure it didn’t influence you. It is wrong. It should not be.”

“Pietro-”

“If you want this,” Pietro says, “I would rather you chose it yourself for yourself, than because you think I need it. Because you are as wrong as me, than because you think if one of us is so, the other should be the same.”

There must have been something in Wanda’s expression for Pietro to say what he does next.

“I don’t need it. All I need is to know that you are well.”

He says it as though it is the simplest thing in the world, as though the love that fills his mind isn’t one which goes against their siblinghood, against taboos, against everything they had agreed on so long ago. As though it isn’t  _ wrong. _ He says it as though the love doesn’t matter, as though  _ he _ doesn’t matter, as though the only thing that matters is Wanda.

“Charles-” she says.

“He guessed,” Pietro says. “He did not understand why it was and why I would deny it.” He shakes his head. “I’ve told no one,” Pietro promises. “The Professor figured it out - when he was poking - but… .” He pauses, shakes his head again. “This isn’t something you tell people.”

“They will assume-” Wanda starts and Pietro shakes his head.

“They will assume anyway. No matter what we do or say, people will always assume that of us. You need to heal, you need to know I am not dead. It is no cost to me to stay with you when you sleep.” His eyes meet hers, certain burning blue into Wanda’s pale hazel, his hand strokes gently over her cheek. “You are my sister, Wanda. I love you, and I always will love you. It is no cost to me to make sure you sleep well. It is no cost at all.”

Echoing out of his mind in grey and silver and blue comes more.  _ I would always rather see you well than not, no matter the cost _ .

 

* * *

 

The day they leave to go back to the school, while Pietro finds everything she brought or that Erik got for them and tucks it away, Wanda sits with Erik downstairs.

No one will interfere, will interrupt. This is a moment between father and daughter, and even Pietro will stay away as long as needed.

Erik’s helmet is on the table between them.

“You both-” he starts. “I… I did not know you existed. It did not occur to me that you would exist. And even when it was obvious I was… so set on my goals, I did not see.”

Wanda watches him, unblinking.

“I want to be a father to you. At least, I want to be some kind of parent to you. I know that-” There is something almost choked in his voice as he says, “I know you may not want me to. I know I may not deserve to.”

“You do not understand us,” Wanda says softly. “I do not think you ever will, I do not think anyone ever will. You said that we are close, and that some people think we are too close, but you do not understand it and you do not understand why. You do not assume, as so many do, but that is worse, if you are to be our father, because you should at least  _ care _ enough to ask, as Mom did. But you do not.”

“He goes mad when you get hurt,” Erik says. “You went mad with him gone.”

Wanda shrugs. “He has always been there. He has dedicated himself to keeping me safe.”

Erik’s voice is soft, his hands surprisingly gentle as he takes Wanda’s hands in his. “Oh my daughter,” he says, soft and gentle, sorrowful and sad. “You cannot keep yourselves as two halves of a whole forever. The world will always seek to tear you apart.”

_ So we are stronger than the world. _

Erik’s smile is the softest, saddest expression she thinks she’s seen on his face. “You are like me,” he says. “Angry, furious, burning at the world and you would burn it all down for taking from you the ones that you love, if you could.” His thumb is gentle, rubbing away a tear she had not even noticed in her lashes. “We are powerful, Wanda, but no one is that powerful. Not even you or I. Not even Charles.”

“Then we fight,” Wanda says. “We fight as long as we must.”

Erik’s hands fall to the table, gentle and quiet. “Or,” he says. “When you are ready, when you have healed from this, when you are safe in the knowledge that you are both whole once more, you learn how to be whole without the other.”

Wanda watches him, uncertain and eerie, watching him until Pietro’s hand lands gently on her shoulder.

“It’s time to go.”

Wanda rises, takes the bag from Pietro’s hand and turns to Erik.

“Thank you,” she says. “And no thank you, and thank you once more. For bringing Pietro back, for offering us a lasting place here, and for your advice.” Her hand is tight around Pietro’s wrist, the scarlet in her eyes flickering between present and faded as she considers. “We will call you father,” she says, “So long as you do not hurt us or ours.”

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


End file.
